Does Telecom Data Fight Crime?

In 2006, the EU passed its data-retention directive, which forces telecom companies in Europe to store details of calls and emails by their customers and share them with police chasing crimes. As fans of cult HBO show "The Wire" can attest, information of this sort can be essential in making a case.

The European Commission is currently reviewing the directive, which has been challenged across the continent by civil-liberties organizations. They have filed lawsuits, and the European Court of Justice is expected to rule on the legality of the stricture in 2012.

Germany, which because of its history has a fierce privacy culture, has criticized the law. Its justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger has advocated collecting data only for suspect communications. In other words, telecom companies would only store data if ordered to in a specific case. Viviane Reding, the EU’s Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, has called this a “promising approach.”

Meanwhile, interested parties are pushing their arguments. On Thursday, AK Vorrat, a German NGO that defends civil liberties, released a report arguing that while the data-retention law might not be hurting, it certainly wasn’t helping.

Germany wrote the EU law into national legislation in 2008, mandating a six-month retention period for data. Between 2007 and 2009, the number of “serious criminal acts” in Germany increased to 1,422,968 from 1,359,102, and fewer were cleared, 77.6% in 2007 compared to 76.3% in 2009.

A logician would find serious flaws with the argument. There could be other causes for the increase, such as a worsening economy. Data retention might have prevented crime from rising even more.

AK Vorrat's argument: Data retention “did not make the prosecution of serious crime any more effective.”